NOTE:
New for 2013, there will be two kinds of manuscripts accepted into the ICTD program track: Full Papers and Notes.

CONFERENCE AND PROGRAM OVERVIEW:
Held in cooperation with ACM SIGCHI and ACM SIGCAS, ICTD2013 will provide an international forum for scholarly researchers exploring the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in social, political, and economic development. Hosted by the University of Cape Town and the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, ICTD2013 is the sixth of an ongoing series of conferences occurring every one-and-a-half years; previous conferences have taken place in: Berkeley, CA (USA) ICTD 2006; Bangalore (India) ICTD 2007; Doha (Qatar) ICTD 2009; London (United Kingdom) ICTD 2010, and Atlanta, GA (USA) ICTD 2012.

Over decades, as radio and television have been joined by computers, the internet, and mobile devices, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become more pervasive, more accessible, and more relevant in the lives of people around the world. Virtually no sphere of human activity remains apart from ICTs, from markets to health care, education to governance, family life to artistic expression. Diverse groups across the world interact with, are affected by, and can shape the design of these technologies. The ICTD conference is a place to understand these interactions, and to examine, critique, and refine the persistent, pervasive hope that ICTs can be enlisted by individuals and communities in the service of human development. There are multidisciplinary challenges associated with the engineering, application and adoption of ICTs in developing regions and/or for development, with implications for design, policy, and practice.
For the purposes of this conference, the term “ICT” comprises electronic technologies for information processing and communication, as well as systems, interventions, and platforms that are built on such technologies. “Development” includes, but is not restricted to, poverty alleviation, education, agriculture, healthcare, general communication, gender equality, governance, infrastructure, environment and sustainable livelihoods. The conference program will reflect the multidisciplinary nature of ICTD research, with anticipated contributions from fields including anthropology, computer science, communication, design, economics, electrical engineering, geography, human-computer interaction, information science, information systems, political science, public health, and sociology.

In addition to inviting the Full Papers and Notes detailed here, the conference will offer a variety of opportunities for participation, including open sessions, pre-workshops, and demos. Check our website for further calls.

CALL FOR FULL PAPERS:
Full Papers (ten pages in ACM two-column format) will be evaluated via double-blind peer review by a multidisciplinary panel of at least three readers, overseen by an experienced associate chair.

Full Papers will be evaluated according to their novel research contribution, methodological soundness, theoretical framing and reference to related work, quality of analysis, and quality of writing and presentation. Manuscripts considering novel designs, new technologies, project assessments, policy analyses, impact studies, theoretical contributions, social issues around ICT and development, and so forth will be considered. Well-analyzed negative results from which generalizable conclusions can be drawn are also sought. Authors are encouraged (but not required) to address the diversity of approaches in ICTD research by providing context, implications, and actionable guidance to researchers and practitioners beyond the authors’ primary domains.

Accepted Full Papers will appear in electronic conference proceedings and will be archived in the ACM digital library. A subset of the Full Papers will also appear in a special issue of Information Technologies & International Development. New in 2013, authors of all accepted Full Papers will be invited to give a talk, either in plenary or in parallel sessions.

Only original, unpublished, research papers in English will be considered. Papers must use the templates (LaTex and Word) available on the submissions page, and must be no longer than 10 pages. Submissions longer than 10 pages, not in the template format, not related to the conference themes, and/or not meeting a minimum bar of academic research writing will be rejected without full review. Full Papers must not include names or other information that would identify the authors.

Full papers must uploaded via the submissions page by the deadline, May 1, 2013 (11:59pm UTC). Formatting instructions and links to the upload page can be found at the conference submissions page. Authors will be required to sign a copyright release to ACM for publication in the conference proceedings.

CALL FOR NOTES:
For ICTD2013, a new document category, Notes, is available. With a shorter 4-page format, Notes are intended to highlight work from a range of researchers and practitioners, and can be used to introduce work-in-progress that may be published later in a journal, as well as to document shorter project write-ups.

Notes will be evaluated by at least two multidisciplinary reviewers, but not in a double-blind fashion. Notes will be assessed according to their research contribution, methodological soundness, quality of analysis, and quality of writing, and presentation. Manuscripts considering novel designs, new technologies, project assessments, policy analyses, impact studies, theoretical contributions, social issues around ICT and development, and so forth will be considered, however Notes need not necessarily be as comprehensive, novel, or generalizable as Full Papers.

All Notes submissions are strictly limited to four pages. To allow for late-breaking findings, Notes are due on July 26, 2013, closer to the date of the conference. The 4-page manuscripts of the Notes will be made available in the ACM Digital Library under a separate heading of “ICTD2013 Notes”, but unlike Full Papers, copyright for Notes will be retained by the authors.

Only original, unpublished manuscripts in English will be considered. Submissions must use the templates (LaTex and Word) available on the submissions page, and must be no longer than 4 pages. Submissions longer than 4 pages, not in the template format, not related to the conference themes, and/or not meeting a minimum bar of academic research writing will be rejected without full review. Authors of accepted Notes will be required to prepare a poster; template is available here.

Authors of accepted Notes will be invited to present in one or more poster sessions during ICTD2013. Note that since the Full Paper and Notes submission review cycles will be sequential; it will be possible to revise, shorten, and resubmit elements of promising but unselected Full Papers in time for reconsideration in the separate Notes review round.

KEY DATES:
March 1, 2013: paper submission site opens
May 1, 2013: deadline for submission of Full Papers
June 21, 2013: notification of acceptances for Full Papers
July 26, 2013: deadline for submission of Notes
July 26, 2013: deadline for application for travel scholarships
August 23, 2103: notification of acceptances for Notes
September 6, 2013: camera-ready Full Papers and Notes due
December 7-10, 2013: ICTD2013 in Cape Town

GENERAL CONFERENCE CHAIRS
Gary Marsden, University of Cape Town
Julian May, University of the Western Cape